![\"\"](\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/18cent.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Whenever I go to a gas station, I sometimes glance around at the pumps around me to see what the previous customer paid for their fuel.\u00a0 Most of the time, it\u2019s so I can see how many people paid out in nice perfectly round even numbers like $20, sometimes $10, and even the occasional $5.\u00a0 Once I saw one pump actually sitting at like $165, which meant that someone with a Hummer or a Land Rover must have filled up all 40+ gallons of their tank with high-octane at the same cost of what a Sega Genesis, an extra controller and\u00a0Ecco the Dolphin<\/em>\u00a0cost me when I was in the sixth grade.<\/span><\/p>\n Twenty bucks I can understand, and to some degree I get ten dollars, if they\u2019re like a teenager or someone who probably still either doesn\u2019t have enough disposable money on hand, or just can\u2019t afford more.\u00a0 Anything less than $10, and I\u2019m often curious to how pointless it kind of is to even roll into the gas station in the first place, because even if they had pretty fuel economic vehicles, they\u2019re guaranteed to be back in a day or two, tops.\u00a0 Way, way less if they had like a Ford Explorer or any kind of six-plus cylinder vehicle.\u00a0 Obviously, I don\u2019t know these peoples\u2019 financial situations, and such implications mean they can\u2019t be too well off, but I\u2019ve seen my share of people in some pretty luxurious cars also doing the whole \u201cpay for less than $10 worth of gas\u201d thing before as well.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Man, my time is way more valuable to me to have to want to stop by the gas station every single day, so needless to say, whenever I go, it\u2019s fill-up all the way.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to be back for at least 4-7 days.<\/span><\/p>\n I saw this pump adjacent to mine one day.\u00a0 The previous customer purchased\u00a0eighteen cents<\/em>\u00a0worth of fuel, equating to 0.05 gallons of unleaded.\u00a0 5% of one gallon of gas.<\/span><\/p>\n Now this, was definitely a situation of wondering just how bad it has to be for a person to have to get just eighteen cents worth of fuel.\u00a0 I can\u2019t really fathom any sort of scenario where a person willingly felt like going to the gas station to top off, and needing just 0.05 gallons of gas to do such.\u00a0 There\u2019s a chance that the surcharge the station has to pay on a credit card transaction might cost more than that.\u00a0 This definitely seems like a scenario where a person was running on fumes and their car was just beginning to show signs of complete emptiness, and they rolled into the place and literally had no cash on hand except for eighteen cents they were able to scrounge together by searching frantically throughout their car, as well as panhandling or checking around the immediate area for loose change.\u00a0 And with that eighteen cents, they were able to procure just 0.05 gallons of gas for their car.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s really almost meaningless too, to put in that little gasoline.\u00a0 Say they had a modestly decent car that got 30 mpg on the highway.\u00a0 Do the math, and 5% of an entire gallon still buys them 1.5 miles worth of fuel.\u00a0 Now imagine if it\u2019s any sort of gas guzzler like an Expedition or a Yukon that gets like 9 mpg.\u00a0 0.05 gallons of gas barely buys them another\u00a0half-mile<\/em>.\u00a0 And living around where this picture was taken, I can assure you that I\u2019m fairly certain that 1.5 miles in any direction isn\u2019t enough to get to any residential areas.<\/span><\/p>\n What was really the point of even making this purchase in the first place?\u00a0 What kind of place does a person have to be in to where eighteen cents worth of fuel is even worth it?<\/span><\/p>\n No matter what way you put it, it\u2019s hard to imagine any sort of scenario where this wasn\u2019t a measure of desperation, or some sort of analogy of hitting bottom.\u00a0 Personally, I couldn\u2019t really imagine what a life where scrounging for eighteen cents for gas would be like, or maybe I\u2019ve just got a different approach.\u00a0 At that point, the car is more trouble than it\u2019s worth, so as denigrating as it might be, I\u2019d probably sell it for what I could, and then start taking the bus or bumming rides.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Whenever I go to a gas station, I sometimes glance around at the pumps around me to see what the previous customer paid for their fuel.\u00a0 Most of the time, it\u2019s so I can see how many people paid out in nice perfectly round even numbers like $20, sometimes $10, and even the occasional $5.\u00a0 … Continue reading 5% of a gallon<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[51,45,83,15],"class_list":["post-36803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-cars","tag-fail","tag-observations","tag-og"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36803"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36805,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36803\/revisions\/36805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}